


than are dreamt of in your philosophy

by Code16



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: (kind of), Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Deadly Decadent Court, Mage!Harold, Mage!Root, Magocracy, Not!Fic, Other, branching aus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 15:10:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8107024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Code16/pseuds/Code16
Summary: This time to go in the ‘magocracy’ direction of magic and power dynamics aus.In this world mages are in charge and in power (and not particularly nicely).





	1. Harold

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written on [my tumblr](http://findundergrounddragoutofwater.tumblr.com/tagged/mageocracy/chrono)
> 
> content warning for slavery-like things and relationships-in-bad-power-dynamics-depicted positively

In this world mages are in charge and in power (and not particularly nicely). There’s some kind of mage palace for them to live with all the best of everything and from where they rule.

Harold is a mage - powerful, very, but not oriented to the showy kinds of magic. Not much into internal mage politics either. He’s more scholarly, works with the intricate and complex, the edges of known magical work (and beyond those edges). 

Through them, he’s created a magical version of the Machine - something that will let him know when certain awful things will happen. But, what to do now? The magical principles are fascinating of course (not that many (any) other mages at the palace share his interest except in as much as it might be applicable to give them greater control and power over their realms). But this is about  _lives_  now, only he doesn’t have the needed resources at all. 

He can’t go out himself - he’d only terrify everyone, and it couldn’t go unnoticed by the other mages long, and that wouldn’t end well at all. The higher mages wouldn’t stand for that kind of disruptiveness to the mage-human social system as it exists. And if they found out about his work they’d take it for themselves and do something terrible with it.

So - enter (of course) John. No need for a general slave au - mages can take whoever they want. Plenty of other mages do, have servants or toys or pets. Harold never has, of course, was never going to - other people’s lives aren’t his playthings, he has no right. But he sees John in his scrying glass one day and well. He still has no right, but he can’t quite stop himself from looking again. And again. And day by day the Machine shows him the lives he can do nothing to save, and Harold looks in on John and - well, it doesn’t really take power at this point to know that if things only continue one day he’ll look and he’ll see a body. (And people die every day, of course. But that’s started to feel like something he - doesn’t want. Doesn’t want more than he could say exactly why.)

So in the end he makes his decision.


	2. Root

Root in this world would be really into  _magic._ Not magic as in ‘used by mages to do workings’ (though of course she does (quite incredibly) that too). But magic as beyond that, not only a tool she can use but magic itself, wondrous and mysterious and unseen.

She left the mage palace she was brought up in years ago, less than no interest in any of that. She runs her self-invented arcane experiments on her own, trying to push against the fabric of reality to feel its shape. She travels, seeking out stories of wild magic, seeking out their sources, keeping always on the watch for new discoveries, new unknown facets of the world. 

So when she starts getting these whisper-intimations of something created from magic, by magic, that may have become *conscious*, well. (Of course they won’t know what they have. Everyone she’s seen, met, even the scholars - to them magic is a tool, a resource. Something you  _use_ , something that, by knowing the right means and careful work, you can do what you want with, at most that can be arranged to do what you want. 

But she knows.)

(Younger, so many years ago, she wanted to change the world. Could see a different world in her mind. Defy it, live it, reshape it. But the world is set in its shape. (-an unweeded garden/that grows to seed. things rank and gross in nature/possess it merely-*). Magic is a better realm. Purer, greater. What else could she ever need, or want.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (*Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 2. I’m sorry, I thought of it and then I couldn’t not.)


	3. John

So obviously in mageocracy world armies and intelligence agencies are just pieces/means for mages of different dominions to play power games with/against each other. 

But now I can’t decide between a John whose past involves being just a sent-out operative - mages are high up sources of orders but he doesn’t actually  _meet_  them, he’s heard stories of all sorts of course, but Harold sending the palace guard for him is his first time being actually that close, being actually  _there_.

And a John who was sometimes a different kind of operative. Because one element of mage power games is to visit each other - grand opulent visits where the hosts welcome the visitors in great splendor and everyone has parties and other such entertainments together - while in the undercurrent (which no one will bring up overtly, of course, though everyone knows it is happening) they’re all maneuvering and plotting against each other. And so of course as part of this they bring in operatives in the guise of servants/pets, to send them out while they’re there. Which also of course involves periods of time of those operatives also being those covers they’re there under. So that would be a rather different experience for John to be coming from.


	4. Root and Hanna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning one mentioned branch with killing women (canon level)

So I was thinking about possible backstories for magocracy!Root

and thinking about Hanna being one of the human servants at the mage palace Root grew up in, and Root taking a liking to her. And possibly her getting killed this way and this setting off Root leaving. 

At which point my brain began spinning off AU ideas

  1. In which Root basically steals Hanna and runs off with her  
  

  2. In which Root successfully acquires Hanna for her own (at which point she’d be generally safe from anyone else)



Now I need more Root and Hanna AU’s…


	5. Hanna

or as another one - not ‘stealing’ (that would bring trouble) but Root acquiring Hanna (from general palace service) in some manner that’s considered - legal but maybe not very ‘polite’ or something. And then going off on her roaming (with her).

She offers, more than once, regularly, to set Hanna up in some human town if she wants. As a mage she can provide enough resources for a pretty good life, impress on the local government that no one better mess with her, maybe leave some kind of sign that tells any other mages that Hanna’s taken. (She still doesn’t like that option as much - whatever she does, she can’t protect against *everything* in absentia.  ~~Also she’d miss her~~. But she doesn’t want to be dragging Hanna around all the time if Hanna actually hates it). But Hanna always says she prefers to stay.

(It sounds terribly lonely, in a town all by herself. She makes friends easily, she always has - gets to know the other human servants anywhere they stop. But it’s not the same. 

And how many other people get to live like this after all - seeing so much of the world, so many new people. So much *space* - a human alone could never travel to the kinds of places she’s been, not without a super-powerful mage for protection and finding their way and getting food and water when they need it and did you know there’s some places where people will die because there’s not enough air but of course safe in Root’s bubble they can see them anyway-

And now that she’s Root’s personally she’s treated much better at the mage palaces - there’s good food and a place to sleep in Root’s room and (unless she does something she’s not supposed to, which she doesn’t) none of the other mages are going to bother her. 

And Root shows her really amazing things with magic sometimes. (She doesn’t tend to understand much of what Root says to her about magic, but Root doesn’t seem to mind, so that’s probably alright.))

(I think in this version Hanna didn’t have much of a family. Like, personal human pets/servants, mages pick out themselves if they want them/if someone appeals. But for general palace purposes they don’t feel like doing that work, so the proxy human government is expected to supply them. So of course they tend to go for, well, orphans and other such people most human citizens won’t miss too much. (sidenote, that’s likely how John got into the army/intelligence service here…))

(Maybe sometimes Hanna does get kind of tired out so Root ensconces her some nice place for a while. Sets up magical communication means so they can talk.)

(I figure this world has some maybe magic-assisted means of long distance communication, and Root makes sure Hanna can get access to it so she can keep in contact with anyone she wants to among all the people she keeps meeting).

Meanwhile, having a human servant/pet with her makes Root look somewhat more respectable to the other mage palaces she visits (not that she cares, but it does help in getting people to talk to her.)

Also of course eventually this is going to lead to Root and Hanna interacting with Harold and John…


End file.
